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Ethnonationalism and Political Stability: The Soviet Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Gail Warshofsky Lapidus
Affiliation:
University of California
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Abstract

While the Soviet system has demonstrated an unusual degree of immunity to the worldwide upsurge of ethnic self-assertion, rising national consciousness among both Russian and non-Russian populations poses a growing, although not necessarily unmanageable, problem for the Soviet leadership. Several issues bearing directly on the resources, power, and status of different nationalities lie at the heart of current debates: the nature and future of the federal system; the pace and pattern of economic development; access to positions of political power; demographic policy; and cultural and linguistic status. Over the long term, the political mobilization of ethnicity is likely to be constrained by both intrinsic and systemic factors, encouraging national elites to focus on strategies and goals that will enhance their power within the system rather than challenging it directly.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1984

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References

1 Typical of a voluminous body of such writings is the assertion that the U.S.S.R. has created a “fundamentally new social and international community … a single and friendly family of over 100 nationalities jointly building communism,” based on “friendship, equality, multi-faceted fraternal cooperation and mutual assistance.” Fedoseev, P. N., Leninizm i natsional'nyi vopros v sovremennykh usloviiakh [Leninism and the National Question in Contemporary Conditions] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1974), 357–58.Google Scholar All translations are by the author unless otherwise noted.

2 Pravda, October 18, 1961, p. 1.

3 iPravda, February 24, 1981, p. 3.

4 Pravda, December 22, 1982, pp. 1–2.

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6 For a useful discussion of the creation and activities of the Council, see Goble, Paul, “Ideology, Methodology and Nationality: The USSR Academy of Sciences Council on Nationality Problems,” paper delivered at National Convention of the APSA, Washington, D.C., August 1980.Google Scholar In recent years, Party organizations in a number of republics have created additional bodies to coordinate research and policy on nationality problems.

7 Pravda, December 22, 1982, p. 2.

8 See, for instance, the work of Merle Fainsod, Alex Inkeles and Raymond Bauer, John N. Hazard, Leonard Schapiro and Adam Ulam, and, among recent writings, Inkeles, Jerry F. Hough. and Bauer's, The Soviet Citizen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961)Google Scholar is particularly instructive as a case in point. Although their study demonstrated extraordinary prescience in anticipating many of the key developments of the Khrushchev period on the basis of refugee interviews, it failed to anticipate the emergence of a significant dissident novement in general and of national protest in particular.

9 Cleavages based on functional specialization, for example, are explored by Lodge, Milton, Soviet Elite Attitudes Since Stalin (Columbus, Ohio: C. E. Merrill, 1969)Google Scholar and in Skilling, H. Gordon and Griffiths, Franklyn, eds., Interest Groups in Soviet Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; on task differentiation, by Jerry Hough's contribution to Skilling and Griffiths, ibid.; on policy orientation, by Franklyn Griffiths, ibid., and by Kelley, Donald, “Environmental Policy-Making in the USSR: The Role of Industrial and Environmental Interest Groups,” Soviet Studies 28 (October 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a review of these approaches, see Lapidus, Gail W., “The Study of Contemporary Soviet Policy-Making: A Review and Research Agenda” (Workshop on Contemporary Soviet Policy-Making, Berkeley, Calif, 1980).Google Scholar

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14 Bennigsen and Broxup (fn. 10), 140 (emphasis added).

15 For a perceptive treatment of this theme, see Enloe, Cynthia, Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in Divided Societies (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980).Google Scholar

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17 Smith, Anthony, Theories of Nationalism (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 168.Google Scholar A similar Soviet view is found in Bagramov, E. A., Natsional'nyi vopros v bor'be idei [The National Question in the Struggle of Ideas] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1982), 67Google Scholar: “Socialism draws a solid line between the concepts of [national] and [nationalistic] The former is preserved and developed under socialism.”

18 For a more comprehensive treatment of this thesis, see Lapidus, Gail W., “The ‘National Question’ in Soviet Doctrine: From Lenin to Andropov,” paper presented at the Lehrman Institute, New York, March 16, 1983.Google Scholar See also Connor, Walker, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

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20 “Torzhestvo leninskoi natsional'noi politiki,” [The triumph of Leninist nationality policy], Kommunist (No. 13, 1969), 10 (emphasis added).

21 Kosolapov, , “Klassovye i natsional'nye otnosheniia na etape razvitogo sotsializma” [Class and national relations in the stage of developed socialism], Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia (No. 4, 1982), 10Google Scholar (emphasis added). These views were also presented at a major conference in Riga on “The Development of National Relations in the Conditions of Developed Socialism” in June 1982.

23 Ibid., 15 (emphasis added).

23 Morozov, M. A., Natsiia v sotsialisticheskom obshchestve [The Nation in Socialist Society] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1979), 41.Google Scholar In a similar vein, a recent article in Kommunist Moldavii argues that, contrary to the false claims of bourgeois ideologists, the Soviet people do not consider themselves as some sort of “Russian-Soviet nation” in which the ethnic features of the non-Russian peoples are said to have dissolved and disappeared. In reality the international community does not replace the national one, but encompasses it. … The development of the U.S.S.R. proves that the nation is now the definitive form of social development. Even under socialism, it is within the framework of the nation that production and all other social relations … exist.

Ursul, D., “Raztsvet i sblizhenie sovetskikh natsii—torzhestvo leninskoi natsional'noi politiki” [The flowering and rapprochement of Soviet nations—the triumph of Leninist nationality policy], Kommunist Moldavii 11 (November 1982), 88.Google Scholar

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26 See, e.g., Nekrich, Alexander, The Punished Peoples (New York: Norton, 1977).Google Scholar

27 For a discussion of the earlier controversies, see Hodnett, Grey, “The Debate Over Soviet Federalism,” Soviet Studies 18 (April 1967), 458–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Brezhnev's report of October 4, 1977, to the Supreme Soviet on the discussions of the draft constitution states that a number of proposals were advanced to introduce a reference to the existence of a single Soviet nation, to liquidate or sharply curtail the sovereignty of union and autonomous republics, and to establish a unicameral Supreme Soviet by abolishing the Soviet of Nationalities, but that such proposals were resisted as premature (Izvestiia, October 5, 1977). See also Shtromas, A., “The Legal Position of Soviet Nationalities and Their Territorial Units According to the 1977 Constitution of the USSR,” Russian Review, No. 3 (July 1980), 265–72.Google Scholar For an informative Soviet treatment of current debates over the nature and future of the federal arrangement, see Karakeev and others (fn. 19), 260–98. For an example of advocacy of expanding the powers of republics, see Agzamkhodzhaev, A., “Demokraticheskii tsentralizm i sovetskaia federatsiia,” [Democratic centralism and the Soviet federation], Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, No. 7 (July 1983), 2431.Google Scholar Agzamkhodzhaev is Dean of the Law Faculty of Tashkent State University and a corresponding member of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences. Virtually no published advocacy of altering the federal system has appeared since the late 1960s either in official or samizdat writers.

28 Local elites are not themselves united on these issues, and policy differences cut across both indigenous and Russian elites. See, for example, the study by Zimmer, Teresa, “Ethnic Identity and Policy-Making in Soviet Uzbekistan,” paper presented at AAASS meeting, September 1981Google Scholar, Asilomar, Calif.

29 Ponomarev, B. N., “Leninskaia natsional'naia politika KPSS na etape razvitogo sotsializma i ee mezhdunarodnoe znachenie” [The Leninist nationality policy of the CPSU at the stage of developed socialism and its international significance], in Vospityvat' ubezhdennykh patriotov-internatsionalistov: Po materialam Vsesoiuznoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii “Razvitie natsional'nykh otnoshenii v usloviiakh zrelogo sotsializma.” Opyt i problemy patrioticheskogo i internatsional'nogo vospitaniia [Rearing Convinced Patriot-Internationalists] (Moscow: Politicheskaia literatura, 1982), 20.Google Scholar

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In the past, when actual equality among peoples had not yet been established, when there still existed significant survivals of the former backwardness of the indigenous nationalities in this or that republic, it was necessary to conduct a policy of indigenization of the apparatus. … But under present conditions, … when there are no longer any backward national districts, the need for such advantages no longer exists.

Tsamerian, I. P., “Vklad XXVI s'ezda KPSS v marksistsko-leninskuiu teoriiu natsional'nykh otnoshenii” [The contribution of the 26th Congress of the CPSU to the Marxist-Leninist theory of national relations], Nauchnyi kommunism 4 (July–August 1981), 6364.Google Scholar

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32 Pravda, December 22, 1982, p. 2.

33 Lt. Nikitin, Gen. Ye., Agitator amii i flota, No. 23, 1982, 1014.Google Scholar

34 For a fuller account of these discussions, see Lapidus, Gail Warshofsky, Women in Soviet Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979)Google Scholar, chap. 8, and Weber, Cynthia and Goodman, Ann, “The Demographic Policy Debate in the USSR,” Population and Development Review 7 (June 1981), 279–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Tatimov, M. V., Razvitie narodonaseleniia i demograficheskaia politika [Population Development and Demographic Policy] (Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1978), 4.Google Scholar

36 For a discussion of the controversy provoked by Khrushchev's initiatives in 1958–1959, see Bilinsky, Yaroslav, “The Soviet Education Laws of 1958–59 and Soviet Nationality Policy,” Soviet Studies 14 (October 1962), 138–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar More recent conflicts are reviewed in Solchanyk, Roman, “Russian Language and Soviet Politics,” Soviet Studies 34 (January 1982), 2342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Litvinova, G. I. and Urlanis, B. Ts., “Demograficheskaia politika Sovetskogo Soiuza” [The demographic policy of the Soviet Union], Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo 3 (March 1982), 3846.Google Scholar

38 The inverse relationship between upward mobility and ethnic prejudice, and its special salience in the more educated, intelligentsia strata, is clearly demonstrated in the research of Arutiunian, Iu. Vs., “Konkretno-sotsiologicheskoe issledovanie natsional'nykh otnoshenii” [Concrete sociological research on national relations], Voprosy filosofii 12 (December 1969), 129–39.Google Scholar The potentially divisive impact of economic issues on nationality relations can be seen with greater clarity in studies conducted in Yugoslavia; see Burg, Steven L., Conflict and Cohesion in Socialist Yugoslavia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar chap. 2.

39 For two examples of a large number of articles dealing with efforts by the KGB to combat ideological subversion from abroad directed at Central Asia, see Tsvigun, S. in Kommunist 4 (September 1981), 8889Google Scholar, and Yusif-Zade, Major General Z., in Bakinskii rabochii, December 19, 1980, 3.Google Scholar

40 Horowitz, Donald L., “Multiracial Politics in the New States: Toward a Theory of Conflict,” in Jackson, Robert J. and Stein, Michael B., eds., Issues in Comparative Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1971), 172.Google Scholar